Dr Calum Webb (he/him)
BA (Hons), MA, PhD, SFHEA, RSS GradStat
School of Education
Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences
Deputy Director of Advanced Data Analytics, White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership
Co-lead of the Research Methods and Methodological Innovation Cluster, School of Education
+44 114 222 7125
Full contact details
School of Education
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Dr. Calum Webb is a quantitative social scientist who researches inequalities in children's social care and the child welfare system and is part of the Sheffield Methods Institute within the School of Education. He is interested in preventative and public health-related approaches to child protection and safeguarding, and the role that poverty, public funding of services, and other structural factors play in preventing or exacerbating the risk of child abuse and neglect. His research has been published in a number of leading journals including the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Children and Youth Services Review, the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, the Journal of Social Policy, Child Abuse & Neglect, and the British Journal of Social Work.
Calum uses a range of advanced quantitative research methods in his work and is currently a Deputy Director of Advanced Data Analytics in the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, the co-lead of the Research Methods and Methodological Innovation Cluster in the School of Education, and module convenor for EDC117 Data Visualisation — Coding & Design and EDC459 Introduction to Quantitative Social Research. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Graduate Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society. He enjoys helping others learn practical data analysis skills and statistical methods in an accessible way.
- Qualifications
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PhD Sociology
MA Social Research
BA (Hons) Sociology
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
Royal Statistical Society Graduate Statistician (RSS GradStat)
- Research interests
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Calum is interested in the relationship between poverty, public service funding, social policy, community, and children's social care and protection. He previously led several quantitative research components of the Child Welfare Inequalities Project before holding a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship that explored the link between decreasing funding for family support, youth and children's services and increasing rates of children placed in care. He currently sits on the steering group of the Child Welfare Inequalities International Network and is part of the Department for Education's Children's Social Care Knowledge Exchange Group. He is formerly an editorial board member for the Journal of Social Policy and is currently an editorial board member for the journal Social Policy & Society.
He has led on or contributed to several significant public-facing outputs that aim to facilitate local authority and national governmental approaches to addressing structural determinants of child abuse and neglect. Examples include:
* The Anti-Poverty Practice Guide for Social Work (with the British Association of Social Workers) https://basw.co.uk/policy-and-practice/resources/anti-poverty-practice-guide-social-work
* The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19 Report (with the Northern Health Science Alliance) https://www.thenhsa.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/Child-of-the-North-Report-FINAL-1.pdf
* The Child Welfare Inequalities Project App https://www.cwip-app.co.uk/
* The Investing in Prevention & Support Project Website and Interactive Shiny App https://ipse.calumwebb.co.uk/
Calum is also interested in the application of advanced quantitative research methods in social science more widely, and regularly supervises or contributes to projects using a range of methods including structural equation modelling, multilevel modelling, quasi-experimental designs, and causal observational studies. He is particularly interested in inference in studies using administrative data and the role of Bayesian statistics.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Place-based inequalities in children’s safeguarding referrals: A multilevel analysis of trends across English local authorities, 2013/14–2021/22. Children and Youth Services Review, 187. View this article in WRRO
- Corrigendum to "Child maltreatment and social welfare service involvement is linked to higher rates of criminal cautions and convictions by early adulthood" [Child Abuse & Neglect, 2025, volume 170, article number 107789].. Child Abuse and Neglect, 174, 107943-107943.
- Criminal justice system outcomes of children with child welfare service involvement and special educational needs: analysis of routinely collected data. Children and Youth Services Review, 184. View this article in WRRO
- Child maltreatment and social welfare service involvement is linked to higher rates of criminal cautions and convictions by early adulthood. Child Abuse & Neglect, 170. View this article in WRRO
- Criminal caution and conviction rates for children who were supported at different tiers of the care system and those who had a special educational need. International Journal for Population Data Science, 10(4). View this article in WRRO
- Neighbourhood differences in the rates of criminal cautions and convictions for children in the care system. Children and Youth Services Review, 172(17 March 2025).
- Predictors of re-referral to children’s social care services: An analysis of the national datasets for England. Children and Youth Services Review, 169, 108113-108113.
- Factors associated with the school exclusion gap for children with social work involvement: a retrospective cohort study using national administrative data. The British Journal of Social Work, 55(2), 663-681. View this article in WRRO
- Intervention pathways following a social work assessment: an analysis of national administrative data for children’s social care in England. The British Journal of Social Work, 54(7), 2937-2956. View this article in WRRO
- Lift Yourself Up: The Short-Term Associations Between Strength Training and Mood States and the Longer Term Development of Physical Capital and “Grit” Among People Recovering From Substance Use Disorders. Health Promotion Practice, 25(5), 845-854.
- Inequalities in out-of-home care rates in England: does local party politics matter?. Child Abuse & Neglect, 149. View this article in WRRO
- Categorising Demand for Child Welfare Services Using Latent Class Analysis: A Study of the National Data-sets on Children in Need in England. The British Journal of Social Work. View this article in WRRO
- Improving inclusivity in robotics design : an exploration of methods for upstream co-creation. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 9. View this article in WRRO
- The differential association of socioeconomic vulnerabilities and neglect-related child protection involvement across geographies : multilevel structural equation modeling. Children and Youth Services Review, 138. View this article in WRRO
- Austerity, poverty, and children's services quality in England : consequences for child welfare and public services. Social Policy and Society. View this article in WRRO
- More money, more problems? Addressing the funding conditions required for rights-based child welfare services in England. Societies, 12(1). View this article in WRRO
- Three roads to Rome? Comparative policy analysis of predictive tools in child protection services in Aotearoa New Zealand, England, & Denmark. Nordic Social Work Research, 12(3), 379-391. View this article in WRRO
- In defence of ordinary help: estimating the effect of early help/family support spending on Children in Need rates in England using ALT-SR. Journal of Social Policy. View this article in WRRO
- Funding for preventative Children’s Services and rates of children becoming looked after : a natural experiment using longitudinal area-level data in England. Children and Youth Services Review, 131. View this article in WRRO
- Understanding out of Home Care Rates in Northern Ireland: A Thematic Analysis of Mixed Methods Case Studies. The British Journal of Social Work, 51(7), 2645-2664. View this article in WRRO
- Are child welfare intervention rates higher or lower in areas targeted for enhanced early years services?. Child Abuse Review, 30(4), 306-317. View this article in WRRO
- Beyond the toxic trio: exploring demand typologies in children’s social care. The British Journal of Social Work, 51(6), 1942-1962. View this article in WRRO
- Income inequality and child welfare interventions in England and Wales. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 75(3), 251-257. View this article in WRRO
- Cuts both ways : ethnicity, poverty, and the social gradient in child welfare interventions. Children and Youth Services Review, 117. View this article in WRRO
- Toward Full Integration of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Case Study Research: Insights From Investigating Child Welfare Inequalities. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 14(2), 164-183. View this article in WRRO
- Untangling Child Welfare Inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England. Children and Youth Services Review, 111. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring the declining rates of state social work intervention in an English local authority using Family Group Conferences. Children and Youth Services Review, 106, ---. View this article in WRRO
- Paradoxical evidence on ethnic inequities in child welfare: Towards a research agenda. Children and Youth Services Review, 96, 145-154. View this article in WRRO
- Social work, poverty, and child welfare interventions. Child and Family Social Work, 23(3), 364-372. View this article in WRRO
- ‘When you're sitting in the room with two people one of whom… has bashed the hell out of the other’: Possibilities and challenges in the use of FGCs and restorative approaches following domestic violence. Children and Youth Services Review, 88, 441-449. View this article in WRRO
- Austerity, rationing and inequity: trends in children’s and young peoples’ services expenditure in England between 2010 and 2015. Local Government Studies, 44(3), 391-415. View this article in WRRO
- Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?. Child & Family Social Work, 23(1), 53-61. View this article in WRRO
- Monitoring a Fragile Child Protection System: a Longitudinal Local Area Ecological Analysis of the Inequalities Impact of Children’s Services Inspections on Statutory Child Welfare Interventions in England. Journal of Social Policy, 1-21.
Conference proceedings
- OP14 Funding for preventative Children’s services and rates of children entering care : a natural experiment using longitudinal area-level data in England. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Vol. 75 (Suppl 1) (pp A7). Virtual Conference, 15 September 2021 - 15 September 2021. View this article in WRRO
Software, code or databases
Datasets
Presentations
Other
Preprints
- Place-based inequalities in children’s safeguarding referrals: A multilevel analysis of trends across English local authorities, 2013/14–2021/22. Children and Youth Services Review, 187. View this article in WRRO
- Grants
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Awarding body Project title Funding amount Nuffield Foundation Studying the outcomes of different types of demand for children’s social care £184,129 (Consultant) Nuffield Foundation Rethinking Domestic Abuse in Child Protection: Responding differently £429,802 (Co-I) Administrative Data Research UK How do differing rates and modes of child welfare service interventions impact upon educational and criminal justice outcomes of vulnerable children? £66,966 (Co-I) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada Beyond neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantages: Deepening our understanding of structural inequalities in disparate child protection involvement £194,633 (Collaborator) British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Investment in Prevention and its Systemic Effects: Modelling the causal effects of spending in children’s services with a whole systems approach. (2021) £257,578 (PI) ESRC Impact Accelerator Account Artificial Intelligence & Social Care: Strengthening Partnerships and Coproducing Priorities in Social Work (2020) £45,173 (PI) Nuffield Foundation Re‐analysing the CWIP quantitative dataset using multilevel modelling (2019) £35,400 (Co-I) Sheffield University Student’s Union Understanding the needs of Chinese students on postgraduate taught programmes (2019) £1,000 (PI) Research England Higher Education Innovation Fund The Child Welfare Inequalities Project App (CWIP App) (2019) £9,981 (PI) Nuffield Foundation Identifying and understanding the link between system conditions and welfare inequalities in statutory children’s social care services. (2018)
£263,652 (Consultant) Nuffield Foundation Identifying and Understanding Inequalities in Child Welfare Intervention Rates (Child Welfare Inequalities Project) (2015) £557,705 (RA) ESRC Innovation, Impact and Knowledge Exchange Developing a policy learning tool for anti‐poverty policy design and assessment. £12,722 (Co-I)
- Teaching interests
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Calum teaches quantitative social research methods and skills on our MA Social Research and BA Social Sciences programmes, as well as delivering quantitative research methods training for PhD students through the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. In 2023, he was nominated for an Education Award for Teaching Practice. He currently convenes the following modules:
* EDC117 Data Visualisation — Coding & Design
* EDC459 Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods
At doctoral level, Calum has taught short courses on Structural Equation Modelling; Advanced Data Tidying in R using the tidyverse; 'finding your programming language' with examples in R, Julia, and Python; Introduction to Data Analysis using R; and Simulation Studies for Model Evaluation (with Prof. Andy Bell).
Calum is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has previously contributed to the development of national higher education standards such as the 2026 QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Social Policy.
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Member of the Social Policy Association
- Fellow & Graduate Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society
- Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy